Lacrymosa
by Daikurosuke
Summary: Where is she now? She woke to a strange world that she didn't know anything about. Now she's terrified, and her sanity is beginning to fray. She doesn't know what's wrong or right anymore, or even real. Could she ever survive?
1. Waking Up

**Author's Note: **This is a short little intro chapter. What I think would happen if a person were really sucked into the game. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Final Fantasy XIII nor any of its characters. I do own one character who has yet to be named.

* * *

She was literally awakened to a battlefield. Explosions coupled with gunfire rang through her ears. Her mind tried desperately to come up with a solution or an excuse as to why this was happening.

It's just in my head.

It's the TV. I must've left it on.

It's my brother. He's playing video games again.

All of those excuses died when she opened her eyes. What she saw couldn't be imagined in even her wildest nightmares. Soldiers dressed in odd uniforms that seemed amphibious in appearance marched off to do battle with their enemies. The visors that covered their eyes bulged out, reminding her of a frog's throat as it croaked, and the uniforms almost seemed to glow green, but that may have been a trick of the light. The things that scared her the most were the automatic weapons they carried. They could make her heart gallop in her chest.

She was only sure of one thing. She wasn't home anymore.

She brought herself to her feet, only to realize that she was on a metal platform raised a terrible distance above the ground.

"Wh-What?!" she stuttered to herself in disbelief. Everything was so much more different than she had ever seen in her life. Everyone around her was scattering and screaming. Gunfire rattled her teeth and she held her ears closed to keep the noise from boring a hole through her brain.

Her knees buckled under the stress, and they thudded against the cold surface of the walkway. She tried to repeat to herself that this was some kind of dream. Nothing like this existed in real life! This couldn't be happening!

She peeled open her eyes to survey her hopefully normal surroundings, but, to her horror, everything was the same as before. The rapid succession of shots from both sides and the battle cries had only multiplied.

"We've got another here!"

Her head whipped around to find one of those soldiers aiming his weapon at her. Her blood began to carry lead instead of oxygen, and her vocal chords were infused with liquid nitrogen. Her eyes widened in complete and utter shock.

The bullets he fired made everything reality. It brought her mind into its most primal state of fight or flight. And she didn't want to die before she graduated high school.

She rolled to the side to avoid the first barrage of bullets, but one grazed her shoulder. The pain sliced through her like a knife as the fabric of her hooded jacket was smeared with crimson fluid. She would have rolled further had there not been a fatal drop to the ground on her next turn.

"You are infected by Pulse. You must surrender or be executed," the soldier's mechanized voice informed from behind his mask.

She raised her hands behind her head and turned away from the man.

"I surrender!"

It was the only thing she could've even thought of doing. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. Every animal in the wild knows when to let the predator have his way. But she didn't know that this man liked a still target.

A metallic click was somehow amplified in her head. It rose above the cacophony of violence and war with a piercing knowledge attached to it. She was going to be shot. Execution style.

Before she could begin to cry, a large smack of something solid could be heard crashing into flesh. The cracks of visors and muttered obscenities accompanied the sound.

"You think it's so easy to pick on girls, huh? Try handling someone your size," the man's smirk was evident in his voice as he continued, "I'm not even armed. Just the way you guys like it, right?"

More cursing, cracking, and crushing followed, but she didn't dare look up. She instead picked up her feet which had been mysteriously welded to the metal only seconds before. She sprinted as far away as she could from this place that didn't make any sense. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew that she wanted to get the hell out of there!

Her feet pounded against the metal in time with her rapid heartbeat.

Clank, Clank, Clank!

Ba-bump, Ba-bump, Ba-Bump!

She rushed away from the confusion and chaos until she found a small hiding place behind two steel girders. She hid herself, trying to conform her body into an unnaturally straight position.

None of the fighting was stopping. Nothing was even slowing down, and she had this overwhelming urge to vomit on her shoes. But she couldn't do that. It would give away her hiding place.

More earth shattering explosions roared through the air, and she could've sworn she heard someone cry out to his mother, but she clasped her hands against her ears to shut it out.

"Where am I? How did I get here? What's going on!?"

No answers came, and she knew the prickling sensation near the corners of her eyes were hot tears ready to burst free. She didn't care. She didn't even wipe them away when they slid forth from their barriers, leaving a trail down the side of her dirty and smudged face.

The pain in her shoulder came alive, rupturing vitality, almost as if she had searing tentacles licking the wound, and she gripped it with as much fierceness as she could muster. She needed to stop the bleeding, but she didn't have the equipment with her.

A tremor ripped its way through the metal at her feet, and she fell to her knees. She shook with the walkway, and could only scream in sheer terror as it began to tilt lower.

"I'm going to die."

How many times had that thought lashed through her mind in the five minutes she had been conscious? Too many to count.

Gravity grabbed ahold of her torso, but she resisted, clasping onto the metal girder that had been her safe haven a few moments before. Her breathing was erratic, and it felt as if her heart was going to leap from the confines of her chest. She had never liked heights, and she was now dangling over about a mile of nothing but air.

She heard several screams. They rode through the air, forcing her to observe their creators.

People.

Hundreds of people, if not more, were falling. They were all going to die. Their bones would crunch and snap with the force of the impact. They knew it. She knew it. But that didn't make it any more believable.

It was happening right in front of her eyes, and she thought she would rather be blind. She couldn't look away as the women, children, civilians, and soldiers alike fell to their inevitable dooms. She could only hope they didn't suffer.

Her grip on the girder was weakening, and the metal might have been slanting a little further down. She could either try to hang on and fall with the girder, or let go and just fall anyway. She didn't have time to figure out which was the more appealing as another explosion shattered her concentration, causing her to begin her descent into unknowable darkness.

It had been her sixteenth birthday just three days before she dropped.


	2. Power

**Author's Note:** Thanks to all who reviewed and favorited/watched. Don't have much time on the computer now a days, so I may be slow in replying to reviews.

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Square's characters, but I do own the battered girl.

* * *

Hope was struck dumb with what he had just witnessed. His mother had just fallen to her death. He traced her path through the air long after she had gone, and he stared at the blond man that had caused it until he fell as well.

He may have screamed or shouted something, but he couldn't remember what. He had reached out his hand to catch his mother even though he knew that she was too far to even throw his boomerang at.

Even though the projectile was lightweight, it felt heavy in his pocket. It weighed him down, but his mind had been set to roam free. It was a present from his mother.

She thought he would like it, and it was the one thing he had hidden from the guards that shoved him and his mother onto the train bound for Pulse. He wouldn't let them take it away, and now it was the only thing he had left.

It didn't seem right. People weren't supposed to just die. People couldn't be gone just like that, could they? But it was. It _happened._ He couldn't trick himself into believing otherwise, no matter how much he wanted to. Needed to.

Someone was saying something to him. It might be a girl, but she sounded far away with static crawling through her voice. Nothing could reach him until a hard stinging slap registered across his face.

"We've got to move! Now!"

He could only nod as he followed the older girl that had snatched his hand.

* * *

"Put down your weapon! I don't want this to get ugly," the guard commanded.

Lightning scoffed as the armored guard waited for her to comply. She was no fool. He would kill her whether she threw down her weapon or not. He just wanted it to be quicker. Even if that weren't the case, she had gone much too far to just give up now. There was no turning back.

A middle aged man rushed to meet the pink-haired ex-soldier. His breathing was still ragged as he tried to ascertain what the guard had just told his new comrade in arms.

"What'd he say?" the man could feel the baby chocobo flutter its wings in his hair as he said this.

Lightning flipped her gun, allowing the blade to swing out. She aimed it at the guard as she replied, "He wants to kill us without a fight."

The man grunted, pulling out his pair of pistols as he bemoaned his age. He was definitely too old for this.

The guard charged, ready to take down his perceived enemies, and Lightning... she just let out a small "Hmph."

* * *

Her head was pounding. It felt as if sand had been blasted into her joints to be left swimming around, corroding them to the point of complete disrepair. Her tongue was swollen and stuck to the roof of her mouth in a none too satisfying manner.

She hadn't died.

Her body continued to pulse and ache, but she wasn't dead. She could _feel _it, and that in itself was a miracle. She didn't appear to be too badly hurt, so she must not have fallen as far as she had first thought she would. The battered girl cracked open her eyes only to find her vision diluted and nonsensical.

"Snow! This one's _alive_!"

The voice was barbed wire shooting through her skull, ripping away any coherent thought except, _'Shut up!'_

She groaned with all of her might, and flopped forward on the hard metal of a walkway. Her vision was clearing a little, but she wasn't going to trust it just yet. She could've sworn that flames were dancing right in front of her face, but no heat was felt.

A hand pressed itself against her shoulder, eliciting a strangled sob from her. The pressure lessened, but not by much.

"Can you tell me your name?" another voice asked.

She really just wanted to sleep the pain away, but the voices were breaking the sound barrier in her head. Nails clattered and screeched inside her until she could see the two people clearly.

"My name is Ylva," she groaned at the sound of her voice. Her words had come tumbling out, hitting each other into an incoherent mess. Of course, the constant pressure being applied to her injured shoulder wasn't aiding the situation in any way, shape, or form.

"Uh, you get any of that?" the blond one asked while rubbing the back of his neck.

"Not real-" before he could finish his sentence, he noticed the blood seeping from the wound he was currently grasping. He muttered curses before fishing a bright blue bottle from his considerable pockets. Ylva objected, but found her pleas wholly ignored by the fiery haired individual.

"Now don't spit this back up or I'll shove it down your throat," the man warned, causing Ylva to seriously wonder about how decent these two were.

The blue liquid flowed like molasses into her mouth, and it had a bitter taste that chilled her teeth. She tried desperately not to hurl the stuff back into the man's face.

"Now that that's handled, show me your shoulder," he ordered. Ylva felt apprehensive about doing so, but she could see that the man was dead set on what he was doing. It was either show him her shoulder or let him rip off the articles of clothing himself.

She revealed to him an injury that still poured blood. It throbbed violently, but for whatever reason, it began to slow in its assault on her nerves. A cool breeze began to build within her, traveling to the tips of her fingers and swelling against her shoulder.

She gasped as she saw the wound stitch itself together. Her skin knitted itself closed, but she felt no pain from the actual act of the wound closing. It grew dulled, as if it were wrapped in cotton. The pain was there, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

And her joints!

Someone had swept all of the sand away, and there were no longer any needles creeping around inside of her. Her tongue had also been set right by the magical liquid. She would drink a thousand more if she could!

"Okay, what was that?" she asked dumbfounded at her now perfect speech.

"Ripped it off one of those PSICOM goons. He won't be using it anyway," the blond explained, lending a hand to help the girl to her feet, "The name's Snow, and you?"

"Ylva," she answered, "What about him?" she asked indicating the fiery haired individual.

"Gadot," he waved her behind Snow and himself as he continued, "Stay close behind us. We'll keep you safe."

Ylva was still confused. She didn't know PSICOM, potions, or anything else about this crazy predicament, but a spray of gunfire in the distance silenced all questions. She would get out first, figure out things later. "Thanks, both of you. I owe you."

"What are heroes for?" Snow smiled.

She did as she was bade to do, but that didn't stop her mind from wandering. _'Where is my family? If I'm here, they must be too.'_

There was something else that had been bothering her. It felt as if she had somehow lost time. The only things she could remember were about her birthday at home with her family. Even then, she couldn't remember the entire day, mostly just snatches of things. Thoughts and information about the events of that day scurried around just out of her reach, and it began to infuriate her.

Up ahead, three PSICOM soldiers were patrolling the area for any possible Pulse carriers. They all clutched their weapons tightly for fear of losing a grip on the situation.

"Stay back, we'll handle this," Gadot ordered, motioning her to hide behind a crumpled piece of machinery. "We're going to clear out the area ahead. We'll tell you when it's okay to come out." His baritone voice pulled her out of her reverie, but it also did something else.

For some reason or another, Gadot's assumption that she would not want to help them fight sparked a tiny bit of anger within her. She knew that she had been running for the majority of the time she had been awake, but that didn't mean that she was incapable of helping them.

Ylva was scared and confused by the gunfire that had first woken her, but now she had a clearer grasp on things, albeit not a much clearer one. She was able to actually think ahead instead of thinking about how to dodge the next bullet, and Gadot just assuming that she would sit back and watch them fight rather than to actually help grated against her nerves.

It made her feel helpless, a feeling that she wasn't on good terms with.

"I want to help," she stated, barely able to keep annoyance from her voice.

Snow put a reassuring grip on her good shoulder and smiled. It was a warm, disarming smile, but Ylva didn't feel any more at ease about letting them go ahead. They were in this together, weren't they?

"I know you want to fight too, but you don't even have a weapon," Snow pointed out.

"Neither do you," Ylva retorted.

"She's got you there, Hero," Gadot laughed, shouldering his firearm that looked suspiciously like that of a soldier's.

Snow sighed in frustration. He wanted to know how to keep her safe, and to explain to her about his preference of fighting with his body rather than a gun. He had been training and honing himself for battle since he was a teen, and he wanted to show that to her before they lost the element of surprise.

He also didn't want anyone else to get hurt...

"_Take him home," she asked. It hurt Snow so much to see her accepting look. She knew that she was dangling over the edge, only able to hold on to his fingers. She looked tired, and he was honestly surprised that she was able to stay up this long._

"_We're gonna make it. Hold on!" he pleaded with her. He didn't want her to go; she kept going on about being a mom, and how they're tough. He couldn't let her die._

_She closed her eyes, grew limp, and dropped below._

_Snow stared at his empty fingers in utter disbelief before following suit._

He refused to let anyone else get hurt.

Ylva let out a gasp as Snow stood up. He was definitely over six feet tall, easily towering over when he stood to his full height. He cracked his knuckles while giving another winning smile. It was that smile that sank her spirits a little.

She looked down while thinking, _'I'm not going to be able to help, am I?'_

These two had obviously trained for battles. They were probably soldiers of some sort. If she tried to help, she would just end up in their way. And that was worse than being helpless.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Gadot reassured. "We'll get you to your family. I'll bet they're with the others now."

"The others?" Ylva questioned.

"Yeah, you didn't think it was just us two fighting against PSICOM, did you?" Snow asked.

Before Ylva could reply, Gadot and Snow exchanged glances. Somehow, they knew what the other was thinking without saying a word, and Ylva suddenly felt very out of place.

Gadot jumped from behind their hiding place with almost fluid quality. Gunfire rattled from his weapon as he aimed for the soldiers' fingers, attempting to dislodge their weapons. Snow jumped in shortly after, happy to help in the fray.

"Is that all you got?!" Snow cried in the heat of battle. She could hear cracking and fists smacking into flesh. And she figured out that this wasn't the first time Snow had helped her.

_You think it's so easy to pick on girls, huh?_

She could see the smirk on his face now as she watched from her hiding place. There was no question. He was the same one who had helped her out when she had first woken up. Now he was doing it again, and she was sitting here doing nothing. That felt even worse than running away.

Gadot continued to fire against the enemies that Snow couldn't see. He may be a hero, but he wasn't invincible. He had taken a few blows, as had Gadot. Ylva bit her lip out of irritation, and then her breath caught in her throat.

Someone was sneaking up on Gadot. He couldn't see him, and it was a pretty safe bet that he couldn't hear him either. Not that the soldier would have to be particularly light footed with all of the noise going on around them.

Ylva didn't even hesitate as rage flooded her system. She was tired of being so damn powerless. She grabbed the closest thing to her hand, which just so happened to be a broken length of chain that had once belonged to some great machine. She brandished it, reveling in the delicious chatter of the links in the chain swinging against each other.

She was no longer powerless! She would no longer run!

She stomped to the soldier closing in on Gadot, whom didn't notice her arrival until he was too late to stop her. She swung the chain out, wrapping it around the man's neck. Surprised, he fumbled in his footsteps, falling back. Ylva yanked the chain in the opposite direction, inadvertently snapping the man's neck under his own weight.

That soldier was the last that had been patrolling that section of the walkway the three were on, and Ylva stared at the still form lying on the ground.

She had taken a life, and it had been simple and easy. She had taken a life, and her hands were shaking. She had taken a life, and her eyes began to sting. She had taken a life, and they were alive.

And Ylva continued to stare at the still form, even as Gadot and Snow came to console her.

Which was worse? Having power and using it or being powerless? To be quite honest, Ylva had no idea.

The war raged on.


End file.
